Forever Geek |
- The Bible in LEGO
- Alien Transformer
- Deus Ex is Closer to Reality Than You Think
- Cyberlords Arcology Pays Tribute to Deus Ex and Syndicate
| Posted: 31 Aug 2011 04:00 AM PDT  The Brick Bible I grew up with my mom telling me and my sister bed time stories from the Bible – both the Old and the New Testaments. I think I found the Old Testament stories more fascinating. How can one not? The creation of the world. King David. The parting of the Red Sea. There are so many riveting stories in the Old Testament – no wonder I didn’t have problems with bed time as a kid! Now, Bible stories have just taken on a new twist. The Bible in LEGO. How about that? The project is officially called The Brick Testament and is considered to be the largest illustrated Bible in existence. Now this is where I have to give you the figures. More than 3,600 illustrations that retell over 400 stories from the Bible. How cool is that, really? This project is the baby of Brendan Powell Smith, and it started out as a web site. It got really popular – how can it not? – and now, you can actually buy it in book form. I can already imagine cool parents holding the book at night, lulling their kids to sleep with a story or two. Here’s a sampling of the images from one of my favorite stories – Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood. One has to be honest about the Bible in LEGO – it is definitely not your usual Bible picture book. Even the wording may be controversial for some. Still, I think that this book would make one cool addition to any personal library. The Brick Bible: A New Spin on the Old Testament is available for pre-order on Amazon. Other Bible in LEGO books by Brendan Powell Smith can be purchased on Amazon as well.
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| Posted: 30 Aug 2011 06:06 PM PDT  "Alientransform" by Carlson Woon Every once in a while, you see something that makes every thought running through your mind come to a screeching halt. This is one of those things. The second I laid eyes on it, I knew I had to share it.
Digital artist Carlson Woon of Malaysia created this image, which is sort of like the lovechild of a Xenomorph and a Transformer. Or as Woon dubbed the piece, “Alientransform.” He used After Effects, Maya, and Photoshop to create his Alien Transformer. My brain cannot even fathom what would be required to take one of the creatures from Alien and replace every single part of its body with a metallic part. Look at the visor over the eyes! All the mechanisms and gears and hydraulics. Even down to the chisel-like teeth. It’s astounding. Hollywood, are you seeing this? Somebody hire this guy!
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| Deus Ex is Closer to Reality Than You Think Posted: 30 Aug 2011 01:48 PM PDT In case you haven’t heard, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the bomb. Go get it. If you’ve already played through it, you can’t help wondering just how far off the future depicted in the game is, when prosthetic “augmentations” become the optimum human condition. The answer is revealed in this slick, 12.5-minute documentary.
Square Enix commissioned filmmaker Rob Spence to look into the current state of prosthetics and cybernetics. Why Spence? Because he’s also known as “Eyeborg,” because he replaced his damaged right eye (after a shotgun accident) with a custom-made, wireless video camera. In the short film, titled Deus Ex: The Eyeborg Documentary, Spence examines “cyborg eyes,” prosthetic arms, and prosthetic legs to see how far we are from the future as seen in Deus Ex. Among other things, the docu posits that Moore’s Law — used to predict the advances in computer technology — also applies to prosthesis and bionics as well, which means that fabricated human body parts are improving at an exponential rate. One engineer Spence interviews even comes right out and says it: by 2027, the year in which Human Revolution is set, it’s not only plausible but likely that human augmentation will have reached the point we see in the video game. So here’s the six million dollar question: would you replace parts of your body with bionics if you could?
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| Cyberlords Arcology Pays Tribute to Deus Ex and Syndicate Posted: 30 Aug 2011 09:52 AM PDT
I finished Cyberlords Arcology from Handy Games last night. With Deus Ex Human Revolution topping most gaming news the past few days, I wasn’t too sure if it was coincidence that Handy Games released this title a couple of weeks before it came out. All you need to do is change the title, and Cyberlords could have very well been a mobile version of Deus Ex in the same way that Mass Effect released a top down iOS version of the same game years ago. Cyberlords Arcology is a top down action game reminiscent of such classics like Syndicate on the PC and Shadowlords. The game gets the feel of Deus Ex right down to the heavy coats packing weapons, mines and grenades and the implants (OK fine, more like Syndicate) which you can buy or discover along the way. There’s an implant for every part of your body, from speed or stealth upgrades for your feet to health regeneration or ablative shielding for your torso. You control a party of four individuals brought together by chance into an organization known as Thor. Something is wrong in the Arcology — a huge city scaled with several levels run by the McCoy Corporation. Fronted by clinical research, the corporation is involved with illegal mind control technology which the four of you have to unravel and stop. You actually can steamroll your way through the entire game once everyone gets equipped with guns and ammo OR you can take the more strategic route and play the game using the turn based mode which you activate with a simple button press. Turn based more allows you to plan your actions with more strategy, letting you set up defensive turrets and landmines to disable robot patrols. But yes, steamrolling works well too albeit with less finesse. A full playthrough of the game can take an entire afternoon and Handy Games was actually pretty cool to have the free version and paid version exactly alike save for the former having a rectangular ad banner on the top of the screen. For a game that took me 3-4 hours to finish (with 3 different endings to beat — ha!) the free version was more than OK. Cyberlords Arcology is a must have. You’ll finish it in one afternoon. It’s loads of fun and easy to learn. And yes, surprisingly the story is rather decent. I’d pay for a bigger sequel.
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